Re: Leading from the front, reprise

On Tue, 29 May 2001, Thomas Barclay wrote:

(sorry, I'm not sure if this is Thomas or not in this para)

> the mike. I find the SG2 rules promote the Lt 
> sitting in the far corner of the board using 
> his radio all day instead of staying with his 
> troops (seen it done many times). Keeps 
> him safe and he can still do his job.... <ick!>

Isn't it wiser to have the LT close to one of the squads in
order to realay orders by voice rather than radio. It
certainly keeps the Red force ECM/EW guys from interfering.
Same goes for the Coy Captain does it not?

> Except that the main reason leaders lead 
> from the front is to get a better tactical feel 
> for the terrain and relative troop positions.

Witness Rommel and his brushes with death. Extremely high
situational awareness. Same goes for Patton as well as
Israeli Tank tactics. TC's stick their heads out. They also
have a high casualty rate. Still, the risk is worth it if
you want to win the fight. 

> --> And more than a few Lts. and Captains 
> got down on the beach and kicked ass 
> personally to get things going. Most poor 
> unexperienced grunts don't know what they 
> should be doing in odd situations or what 

These weren't poor in-experienced units. Not on Omaha
beach. They were veterans from Sicily, North Africa and
Italy. Command broke down. 

> --> Fine, but I think (my opinion) command 
> transfers where the officer can't see the unit 
> he's attempting to command should have a 
> +1 assigned to the tranfer. It's _much_ 
> easier to give an order and clarify things by 
> pointing or saying "by the tree, 60m 
> forward" if you can see the same thing your 

Yep. I like this...

> --> A good way to simulate this sometime 
> would be to setup an SG2 game in one 
> room. Put two players (enemy commanders) 
> in other rooms with just maps. Use either a 
> computer network or just radio and make 
> their guys communicate with them. You find 

The game TacOps is set up for this. It even goes down to
allowing for Supply State and Artillery/Air Support calls.
It is used by the USMC even from what I've heard. It will
network and work in a referee mode from what I've seen. 

> messages, be unclear, execute wrong 
> orders (especially if they go through 

I had a friend run a game once where we did this. Hand
written messages that the ref played with to simulate radio
interference. It made "radio discipline" important. 

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